


Mirror, Mirror

by mercuryandglass



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Rigel Black Series - murkybluematter
Genre: False Major Character Death, Gen, Inspired by The Rigel Black Chronicles, Rigel Black Exchange, Universe Travel, good ending (I promise), round 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-07
Updated: 2020-11-07
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:13:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27563587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mercuryandglass/pseuds/mercuryandglass
Summary: Harriet Potter stumbles into the canon universe at the start of the summer before fifth year. This is what happens before she makes it back.
Relationships: Harriet Potter | Rigel Black & Harry James Potter
Comments: 38
Kudos: 109
Collections: Rigel Black Exchange Round 2





	Mirror, Mirror

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rockerlullaby](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rockerlullaby/gifts).



_7\. home_

She stumbles, gloriously alive, from the whispering black veil into the same room she just fell out of. Cackling echoes in her ears. She’s covered in sweat and dust and blood.

She extends her magic outwards, searching for the bright spots of warmth that are the magical cores of other magical beings.

Hundreds of bright little pinpricks flare up all around her.

She collapses to her knees.

She’s _home_.

* * *

_1\. the downfall of thieves_

Barely a week into summer, barely a week of reprieve from incessant faculty and insipid children, barely a _week_ of time to himself, and Dumbledore is calling him already.

Severus glares at his potion, three stages still from completion, and vanishes it. He will take the ingredients out of the pockets of the Board of Governors. He cancels the flame beneath his now-empty cauldron and the lights in his basement with a single wave of his wand, and walks briskly upstairs.

“Rather early for calls of pleasure. How may I help you, Dumbledore?” It was petty, of course —Dumbledore never called him unless he wanted something; being petty felt good.

His sitting room was dim still, drawn blinds blocking out all but a few valiant streaks of dawn. The flicker of Floo fire washes over his beat up furniture in an eerie green. Nestled in the fire, Dumbledore’s expression is unreadable.

His voice is deceptively flippant when he replies, “I simply came to inquire if you kept any Thieves’ Downfall on hand. The elves say that there is none in your office.”

“I took my supply with me when I left for the summer. How much do you need?” Without waiting for an answer, Severus heads back downstairs.

Dumbledore’s voice follows him, “Just enough for one adult should be plenty, Severus.”

The phrasing is curious; Thieves’ Downfall isn’t a particularly useful potion most of the time. Anything that couldn’t be disenchanted by wand would also most likely be strong enough to withstand the effects of the potion. Personally, Severus finds use in it exactly twice each year; the younger students of Slytherin tended to arrive at Hogwarts with the firm conviction that rules didn’t apply to them, and, after both summer and winter holidays, there is great relish to be had in collecting all magical contraband and taking them for a quick dip in a nice vat of Thieves’ Downfall. It was both safer than keeping the contraband locked up in a drawer and faster than disenchanting each piece by wand.

Only, Dumbledore said “for one adult” as if he intends to use it upon a person —Dumbledore, master of transfiguration, who could probably cancel anything from simple cosmetic transfigurations to animagus and metamorphmagus transformations without even touching a wand. No, it’s more than just curious; it’s confounding.

Dumbledore stays in the call until Severus returns upstairs. “You wouldn’t happen to know if it was possible to prolong the effects of the Polyjuice Potion, would you?”

“One could try taking another dose nearing the end of the hour.”

Silence.

“It is… impossible.”

“Truly? The great minds of modern potions have yet to improve upon the recipe?”

“There is nothing to improve from perfection, and the recipe has been perfected for centuries already.” Severus thrust the heavy glass bottle containing the potion into Dumbledore’s face. “Surely you don’t mean to imply that Polyjuice is the reason you need this.”

Dumbledore smiles genially. “Thank you, Severus. I’m sure you’re terribly curious about this whole affair. I’ll see you in Poppy’s office.”

Before Severus can snap his reply, Dumbledore’s face disappears in a swirl of green sparks. Severus resists the urge to dash the damned potion against the mantle of his now-empty fireplace. He lets out a quiet curse upon Dumbledore’s name before hexing a fire into being.

He spins unceremoniously into the awaiting attentions of one Poppy Pomfrey, who immediately starts fussing over him in the brusque way that she had.

Brushing off her greetings, Severus got down to business. “Where’s Dumbledore?”

Pomfrey purses her lips. “It’s just so bizarre. Now I’ve seen my fair share of strange things, working here so long, but, well, come have a look.” She hurries out the door with nary a glance behind her.

Merlin save him from evasive coworkers. Severus catches up at a dignified pace. “Dumbledore said anything about Polyjuice?”

Poppy huffs. “Of all the things wrong with— No, of course that’s what he fixates on.” She looks back at Severus with exasperation that isn’t directed at him, then continues into the hospital wing.

Only one bed is filled, and it really shouldn’t be surprising, but Severus is nevertheless taken slightly aback. It feels dissonant: to know that it’s summer and to see the figure of what can only be a student lying there unconscious.

“Ever prompt, Severus.” It’s Dumbledore, standing up from the bedside in greeting.

Severus stops a good few paces from the foot of the bed and nods. The child has a boyish haircut and an androgynous face with pointed features common among the minor aristocracy of British purebloods. They may be related to any one of the Blacks or Fawleys or Notts, maybe even the Crouches or Malfoys or Rosiers, for all that the child has dark hair. Severus looks first to Dumbledore, then to Pomfrey.

Dumbledore is the one to respond. “We found her in the forest, buried nearly six feet underground. All she had on her was this—” he nods at a folded pile of clothing. It seemed to be a set of Hogwarts robes, though a few decades out of style. A wand lies at the top, a familiar looking thing made of holly.

“And you require Thieves’ Downfall for…”

Dumbledore’s mouth locks into a grave frown. “I think you’re better served looking her over yourself.”

Severus looked to Pomfrey, who ignored him in favour of rearranging the bedside table. She stowed away a half-empty Nutrient Potion and renewed the warming charm on a tray of soup and bread. Severus swears under his breath and takes out his wand, casting every diagnostic spell he knows at the girl in the bed.

First is the charm that recognises any magical being wearing a shape that is not their natural form, then a more specific diagnosis for the effects of the Polyjuice Potion. Then, finally, a few general diagnostic charms. Pomfrey has put her into a healing coma, a difficult charm that has fallen out of use in favour of the Potion for Dreamless Sleep. The girl is in fact a girl; she has yet to reach magical maturity, for all that a heavy haze of power pours from her. There’s hostility in her magic, something that delays his more benign charms, as if scanning them for potential harm. The girl has been malnourished— starved, really, for almost two weeks. She is under the lingering effects of half a dozen different potions, things that read like the Calming Draught and Pepperup Potion and Wit-Sharpening Potion, but also stranger things, potion effects that he can only guess at. Though she’s slowly returning to equilibrium now, there are also lingering effects of recent dehydration and anoxia.

Severus has never seen anything quite like it. If he had to guess, he might think to things like human trafficking or some deranged psychopath kidnapping teenaged girls for fun, but that would explain neither the polyjuice nor the strange cocktail of other potions.

“How long has it been?”

“Since we found her? I’d say almost two hours. She’s been under Polyjuice this entire time.”

“Impossible.”

“Yet our spells, and yours, don’t lie.”

Severus casts the diagnostic charm for Polyjuice again. It comes back positive.

Poppy huffs. “I won’t wait for you to determine what both the headmaster and myself both concur to have happened. This girl, whomever she is, needs sustenance, which she won’t get if we’re to keep her in the coma. I can’t give her any more Nutrient Potion without risking addiction.”

Pomfrey isn’t the type to play jokes, and this certainly doesn’t seem like a joke, but even then, Severus half expects his wand to turn into a rubber duck and for Dumbledore to laugh and tell his happy April Fools, and oh Severus you should really be more careful about people tampering with your wand. Except Dumbledore stares at him with nothing but expectation.

Severus sighs and uncorks his bottle of Thieves’ Downfall. Wordlessly, he levitates the potion out in a thin stream and directs it to surround the girl on the bed. If not for the sickly grey tinge and the sticky viscosity, one could almost mistake it for water. At its contact, the girl changes. Her hair lengthens perceptibly into a ragged mess of waves and curls. She grows bigger: first in height, then in chest, then in muscle. Her skin darkens to a light tan, and her face softens into something both eerily familiar and eerily foreign. In the end, it looks less like Polyjuice has worn off, and more like she’s taken an Ageing Potion by about a year or two.

Pomfrey doesn’t even blink before she has her wand out, cancelling the coma then, gently, “ _Rennervate._ ”

The girl shifts, and her throat bobs as she swallows. She sniffs, turns on her side to face the bedside table holding soup, then stiffens. Her eyelids flutter, then open, but she immediately closes them again, squinting against the light. A thin hand snakes out from beneath her covers to shade them. She blinks rapidly at that bowl of soup, still more tense than a teenager has any right to be.

She looks about the room, less confused than one would expect, considering she’s never been here before. She relaxes slightly at the sight of Pomfrey, tenses again at the sight of Dumbledore, then relaxes again at the sight of Severus. Her gaze is steady and terribly, _terribly_ green as she stares at him.

“Professor,” she breathes, her voice a rasping mess.

Severus doesn’t even get the chance to process the fact that this strange girl seems to recognise him before Pomfrey puts some water to her lips.

She takes hold of the cup and drinks obediently. “Thank you, Mme. Pomfrey. I’m sorry for all the trouble I’ve caused. Thank you for finding me.” Her accent is strange, archaic in the way only a few old purebloods held to, like Lucius at his most haughty. It feels rather out of place to hear from a child of the current generation.

Severus looks at the robes again and amends his initial judgement. The style seems several decades old, but the cloth and the way it’s been enchanted… It could very well be from Dumbledore’s youth. Severus considers the concept of time travel, the rumours that have been around since Merlin’s time of wizards Apparating forwards in time. Travel to the past is a modern development, an aberration of nature, but travel to the future? Stasis charms have been around since before wands. Except how would a time traveller know that Severus was a professor here? How would she know Pomfrey’s name?

Severus looks to Dumbledore, who’s face opens up in what seems, strangely enough, like understanding. He smiles in a way that Severus has longer learned to distrust, then says “My dear girl, it was no trouble at all, but I’m afraid I’ll need to ask for your name.”

The girl frowns slightly. Then her eyes widen before her face shuts down completely. She runs a hand through her hair in a careful sort of way, almost as if she was checking it through. It certainly seems to have gotten more wild and more rough in texture since the Polyjuice got cancelled, almost like— No. It couldn’t be.

The girl casts a measuring look into her mug, then sighs, the tension running completely out of her. “Harriet Potter, Headmaster.”

“I beg pardon?” Severus says.

Dumbledore has the audacity to laugh. “Well met, Miss Potter. Well met indeed.”

* * *

_2\. the girl without the scar_

Just as Hermione winds down from her scolding of Fred and George Weasley over apparating into the increasingly crowded bedroom in Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place, Ginny appears at the door. Beside her, in the shadow, stands a slightly taller girl with a short, messy bob, wearing what seems to be Hogwarts robes.

“Oh hello, Harry,” she says brightly. “I thought I heard your voice.”

Then, to Fred and George, the girl next to Ginny says. “The Extendable Ears won’t work. There’s an Imperturbable Charm on the kitchen door.” She speaks with a bit of a strange accent, almost like Neville.

The twins slump. “You’re just a wealth of knowledge, aren’t you? How’d you figure?”

Ginny steps in, pulling the girl with her. “It was Tonks, actually. She said to just throw things at the door. It won’t hit if it’s been Imperturbed.”

The other girl closes the door behind them and turns around. She’s about Harry’s height, paler than him, but otherwise similar colouring in bright eyes and near-black hair. Smiling politely, she extends a hand to Harry. “I don’t believe we’ve met. I’m guessing you’re Harry Potter?”

Harry stands up, slightly embarrassed, and smoothes his hand over his fringe. “Yeah,” he says, shaking her hand. There’s a bit of an awkward silence where Harry waits for the girl to introduce herself.

She’s been looking around the room almost expectantly, but then her gaze returns to Harry, and she blinks. “You can call me Rigel, I guess.”

Harry blinks.

Hermione lets out a breath in not quite a sigh, then steps forward to hug the new girl. “How did your placement exams go? It was Potions today, no?”

“I suspect they’ll put me in fifth year. I, uh, _accidentally overheard_ the headmaster discuss it with Professor Snape.” Rigel’s tone belies her innocent grin.

Fred and George perk up. “Snape? We’ve been wondering what that git’s been up to.”

Rigel frowns. “He’s in the Order,” she said mildly. It’s reproachful, almost condescending.

Ron snorts. “Doesn’t mean he’s not—”

Harry interrupts, “Are you in the Order as well, then?” His tone is rather more rude than he meant to be, but he can’t bring himself to care about rudeness right now. He doesn’t remember this Rigel being a Hogwarts student ( _yet_ , if he’s understood all the talk of placement exams), but she seems comfortable with the Weasleys, for all that Ron became more reticent since she’s come in. Why does she seem to know so much more than him? More, even, than Hermione and the Weasleys?

Rigel smiles again. It is identical to the polite smile she used earlier. “No, not at all. I’m just… I’m a refugee, of sorts. The Order has been helping me settle in.”

It’s obviously not the whole truth, and she doesn’t even seem to be hiding it. Harry decides not to pursue it.

Rigel’s smile fades a little at his silence, then she says, “Either way, I came to borrow Hermione. I had a few questions to ask about section four of Waffling’s treatise on Gamp’s Principle Exceptions.” She looks around the room, blinking owlishly when her gaze lands on Hermione.

Hermione opens and closes her mouth a few times before saying, “Not the best timing, but I’m sure everyone else can fill you in on things.” Then she grabs Rigel’s arm and they slip out the door.

Beside him, Ron coughs disbelievingly. Harry finds himself in agreement: there’s _two_ of her?

The twins have an unreadably serious look to their faces. “You don’t think she might be from the continent, do you?” asks Fred.

“Wait,” Harry says, “you don’t know her?”

“No,” George says, “she’s been here longer than us.”

“She’s got a strange accent,” Ron adds, “kinda posh, like.”

“Is her name really Rigel?” Harry is used to witches and wizards having all sorts of odd names, but Rigel seems a bit boyish, as far as names go.

Ron and the twins shrug, but Ginny glances at the closed door before leaning close and saying softly, “I don’t know, but just earlier this evening, when Snape brought her back from Hogwarts, I heard him call her ‘Miss Potter’.”

“What?” Ron exclaims. “Mate, I didn’t know you had any relatives left.”

Ice settles in Harry’s veins. “Neither did I.”

“It’s probably a pretty close relation, too.” George comments.

Fred adds, “You two look pretty similar.”

Ginny chuckles. “Oh don’t look so surprised, Ron. She’s quite a bit better fed and worse sunned than Harry, and she obviously a girl, but if you put glasses on her, you’d think she and Harry were twins.”

Harry can only blink. If she was a relative… Surely someone _somewhere_ would have mentioned it to him, that he had a cousin who was a witch. Surely Sirius would have known, or Professor Lupin, or Dumbledore, or Hagrid. Why didn’t they tell him? _Oh, by the way, your father had an identical twin brother who moved to France and raised a daughter your age._ Except that still doesn’t make sense. It also doesn’t explain why she’s here, in England, _now_.

It’s with these thoughts roiling in his mind that Harry sits through the rest of the conversation about the going-ons in the month that he’d been locked away with the Dursleys, all the way until he stumbles into Hermione and Rigel on the way to dinner. The stairwell smells faintly of mildew and sewage, and both girls looked rather frazzled, but as he steps back to give way to them, Rigel smiles politely at him.

She wades directly into the crowd of excitedly whispering witches and wizards on their way out from the Order meeting and stops in front of Snape, talking quietly. Hermione hangs back in an uncharacteristically timid way, but Rigel keeps gesturing back at her.

“Damnit,” one of the twins says.

“The adults will never talk about anything important if they’re down there,” says the other.

When Harry and the Weasleys make it down to the ground floor, Rigel seems to be finishing up with Snape.

He straightens minutely, turning down the corners of his mouth. “I thank you, Molly, but I really can’t stay for dinner tonight. I suspect it’ll be crowded enough as is.”

“See you tomorrow, Professor!” Rigel says cheerfully.

Behind Harry, Ron shudders. Leaning in, he whispers, “She’s always like that with him. It’s downright creepy.”

“Snape is here that often?” Harry hisses back.

“Yeah, nearly every day.”

Harry follows the Weasleys to the kitchen. Ahead, Rigel confers sotto voce with Tonks, whose hair goes from violet to blue to green back to violet again.

Sirius awaits them all in the kitchen, looking less ragged with clean robes and a haircut. There are bags still under his eyes, and he beams at Harry as he opens his arms for an embrace.

“Sirius!”

“Hello, Harry,” Sirius whispers into his ear. He steps back, maintaining eye contact, then says, “Welcome.”

“What are you— How’ve you been, Sirius? You look great.” He doesn’t, not quite, but he looks much better than he did the last time Harry saw him.

“Do I really?” Sirius huffs a grim laugh, but lightens slightly as he presses Harry into a chair at the table. “I suppose I’ve been a little better than you. I’ve been stuck inside too, but at least my relatives are only portraits.”

“Relatives?” This creepy old house seems rife with it.

Rigel sits down across from Sirius. “This is Grimmauld Place,” she says, matter of fact, “the last foothold of The Noble and Most Ancient House of Black in London.”

Sirius beams at her, looks back at Harry, then back to her again. “I see you two have already met!”

A small knot wedges itself into the base of Harry’s throat. He doesn’t like the way Sirius seems so comfortable with this girl. He clears his throat a little, then mutters, “Yeah, upstairs.”

Rigel just smiles that typical placid smile of hers. “You’ve been stuck with relatives?”

Harry doesn’t bother smiling back. “Muggles. They’re the only family I’ve got left, apparently. What about you? Where were you before you came here?”

Rigel flinches at neither his jab about family nor his belligerent tone. “I was kidnapped,” she says bluntly. “I hear he’s a servant of Voldemort.”

Half the table, openly eavesdropping, flinch a little, and Harry gains some grudging respect for this girl. Beside him, Sirius mutters angrily under his breath. Harry can barely make out something about rats.

When Harry didn’t say much of anything, Rigel adds, almost as an afterthought, “He’s dead now.” Her eyes seem distant, almost mirror-like.

Harry swallows. “The Death Eater?”

She shrugs.

“Good,” he says firmly. “They killed someone recently, you know. A friend.”

“Cedric Diggory, right? My condolences. You lead an eventful life,” she says with neither admiration nor pity.

The knot at Harry’s throat loosens, but he no longer has any words to say. He shrugs, looking down.

Dinner passes without any further words between Harry and Rigel, but, between stew and rhubarb crumble, the silence becomes amicable. Rigel doesn’t seem to talk much, and there’s something comforting about her presence, a strange sort of kinship.

The somber mood lingers even as Sirius drags him and Rigel aside as everyone disperses after dinner. They’re stuffed quite unceremoniously into a gloomy, empty room. Rigel walks immediately over to the large tapestry on the far wall, fingers barely skimming its moth-eaten edges.

Sirius glances after her and grimaces, but looks back at Harry to say, “You haven’t been told, yet?”

Harry frowns and shakes his head, but it’s Rigel who responds, cryptically, “There wasn’t time. Everyone else was right there.”

“What is it that I need to know?” Harry’s tone is less than friendly again.

Rigel’s hand drops to her side before she shrugs. Then she turns around to face Sirius and Harry. “It’s kind of a long story.”

Sirius frowns and opens his mouth, taking a breath before he’s interrupted.

“I didn’t mean that I wouldn’t tell him, Uncle Sirius,” Rigel says with a slight frown. “It’s just difficult to begin.”

Sirius snaps his mouth closed.

Harry shifts on his feet.

Rigel smiles at him in slight apology. “Have you ever heard of the many-worlds interpretation?” She pauses, biting her lips when Harry shakes his head. “It’s something from Muggle physics, and it’s not very relevant, but there is a magical equivalent, a far more concrete theory that this—” she spreads her arms out “—isn’t the only world there is. There are other worlds out there, places where Tom Marvolo Riddle decided to go into politics, where Lily Potter gave birth to a girl.”

Harry frowns. “I don’t understand.”

Rigel reaches into her pocket and pulls out a familiar wand. She turns it around and extends it to him, handle first. “Look.”

Harry grabs it, and a rush of warmth accompanies the gold sparks that come shooting out. He scowls. “Where did you get my wand?” he demands.

Rigel only smiles, holding her hand out. “ _Accio wand._ ”

Reflexively, Harry wraps his fist more tightly around the handle of his wand, but there’s a tugging sensation from the back pocket of his jeans. Moments later, an identical wand, _Harry’s_ wand, lands in Rigel’s outstretched palm.

She wraps her hands around it, and a shower of silver sparks leap from its tip. “My name,” she says, green eyes burning bright, “is Harriet Potter.”

* * *

_3\. two magics, both alike in dignity_

Two batches of Polyjuice Potion bubble sluggishly in their respective cauldrons, behind which stand two girls, wearing eerily similar expressions of trepidation.

Granger fusses at the case of phials set to the side. “You’re sure that this will work?”

Harriet turns guileless eyes up from the cauldron, glancing first at Granger before settling on Severus. “It feels _right_ ,” she says, “nothing at all like _that one_.”

There’s a certain scorn that she uses for Granger’s batch of Polyjuice that she’s used for all the potions recipes she’s tried from the curriculum. Severus understands it to have something to do with the magic.

Harriet’s magic, he’s noticed, is strange. It’s nearly as powerful as the Dark Lord’s, as Dumbledore’s. It eclipses that of the Potter boy’s by far, though Severus wonders if that isn’t because her magic is just more lively. She seems to have, at the same time, both a lax hold over its whims and also an iron grip over its boundaries. Even now, Severus can feel it hanging about the room. It hasn’t the sinister cast of the Dark Lord’s aura, nor the pacifying effect of Dumbledore’s, nor even the wild anger that the Potter boy occasionally displays. It is most like Lily’s, playful and curious, but it has a wild bite to it as well, something that almost reminds Severus of the Dark Lord.

Severus sighs and wishes for a more peaceful livelihood. He holds out two long hairs, both plucked from the same unsuspecting muggle teenager who bore a passing resemblance to those of the pureblood elite. Harriet and Granger each hold out a small shot glass filled with exactly one full dose of their respective Polyjuice Potions. Both doses turn a dark, murky blue.

They look to each other, stalling.

Severus sighs. “I don’t have all day.”

Granger swallows audibly, then drains her glass in on breath. Harriet smiles brightly before doing the same. They both have the presence of mind to set down their shot glasses on the workbench before the effects of Polyjuice take hold.

The change takes them in different ways, Granger shrinking slightly and Harriet stretching slightly to an equal height, features bubbling and shifting. Moments later, two identical faces stare at Severus, one in transparent relief, the other one with boredom.

“Granger, go entertain yourself. Return before the potion wears off. Potter, Professor Flitwick is expecting you for your Charms practical. Do you need an escort?”

The bored-looking girl smiles politely. “Is it on the way to the library? Surely Hermione can show me the way.” Without leave, she grabs Granger’s hand and dashes out the door.

Severus briefly debates scolding her for the insolence, but she’s long gone by the time he decides against it. Heaving a heavy sigh, he sets out to bottle the remaining potions.

Harriet returns well before the hour is up. Her magic stretches indolently from her like a cat waking up from a nap. “Need any help?” She nods towards the basket of knotgrass Severus was sorting through.

“You seem pleased.” Severus Summons a large bulk-storage jar from the student stores and Conjures a plain basket.

Harriet pulls a chair from a neighbouring workstation. “It’s only really the theory that’s strange. There’re barely any differences in wand movement. The practicals are much easier.”

“Except for Potions.”

She smiles ruefully. “Except for Potions,” she agrees. “Even the equipment is different. I mean, it’s still _fascinating_ ,” she says without any trace of irony, “but the potions turn out feeling all _wrong_. A lot of the magic here does. It’s all… dead. Just dead.”

Severus supervises Harriet as she sorts through the first few handfuls of knotgrass, picking out the ones that didn’t survive the preservation process. She does good work. He’s just about to return to his own basket when a knock comes from the half-open door.

“Professor?” It was Granger.

Severus glances at the clock. They have five minutes before the Polyjuice is due. “You’re nearly late.”

With wry amusement, Severus waits while Granger puffs up like some offended cat, freeze, the sigh.

Harriet sets aside her knotgrass. “Enjoyed the unrestricted access to the restricted section?”

Severus looks up. Was Irma not at Hogwarts for the summer? Did he accidentally send _Hermione Granger_ into the Hogwarts library unsupervised?

Harriet’s smile is too innocent when she looks back at him.

Granger pulls up a chair to sit on Harriet’s side of the workbench. “What do you mean?”

Severus scowls. “Miss Potter is simply making ill-advised attempts at humour. Do show her how to handle the knotgrass, Miss Granger.”

Granger obeys meekly as Harriet grins back at him.

Severus feels a detached sense of doom as he realises, for the third time this week, that Harriet Potter would more than likely end up in Slytherin again.

At one minute left on the Polyjuice, Severus orders the both of them away from the knotgrass. He’ll not have his ingredients wrecked when the polyjuice wears off.

Not long after, Granger clutches at her stomach, doubling over. Harriet places a pacifying hand on her shoulder, but remains otherwise unaffected. Once Granger looks again like her typical frizzy self, the dull grey eyes of Harriet’s current form turn to Severus. Elation and defiance dance in equal parts across her lips before she schools her smile into something more demure.

Severus takes a deep breath. If, with her brewing methods, it’s possible to do what she claimed: a year-long version of the Polyjuice Potion, this would change the world. Espionage in the wizarding world is not as advanced as that of the Muggle world; the trade is not unionised in governmental agencies, nor is does it have its practises standardised. Severus, in his own work, came upon many basic concepts independently before he thought to research Muggle methods.

But this, a Polyjuice Potion that could last a _year_ …

“I’m afraid, Miss Potter, that I will need to book you in for some lessons in remedial Potions.”

Harriet’s answering smile, though worn on the lips of some unrelated Muggle girl, bears nothing less than the distilled spirit of Lily Evans at her most devioius.

They don’t actually get down to it until after Harriet cycles through the rest of the staff with placement exams. The consensus is that her theory is lacking but that her practical results don’t lie; it would be an insult to place her any lower than fifth year. She signs up for three optional courses, the same ones attended by Granger.

It hurts, how unlike the Potter boy she is. It hurts, that Lily from another world would bear a daughter so brilliant, that Severus’s counterpart would teach her without even knowing who exactly he has had the pleasure of teaching.

It hurts also that the Severus of this world has only that self-centered, stuck-up, little dimwit of a Potter boy.

She’s talking to him when Severus arrives at Grimmauld Place, leisurely dusting the remnants of Floo ash from his robes. They’re engaged in quiet conversation, almost intimate. (At that thought, a curl of disgust tugs at Severus’s gag reflex.) The Potter boy seems subdued today —almost surprising, considering he’s been little more than a roiling mass of self-righteous rage lately, always eager to thrust himself into the spotlight of danger. That he was so calm so close to the date of his hearing could only be Harriet’s achievement.

Severus clears his throat.

The Potter boy tenses immediately, and Harriet looks up. She smiles at him, a small one that feels far more genuine than her typical facade of politeness. It’s easy to see how she fit in within Slytherin house.

She pats the Potter boy’s hand before standing up from her armchair. “Professor,” she says, “you’re early.”

Severus checks his pocket watch. “Fifteen minutes is early only to the compulsively tardy.” He makes sure to glance derisively into the Potter boy’s terribly green eyes as he says the last two words.

Harriet steps forward, blocking the line of sight. She deliberately rolls her borrowed grey eyes at him. She’s cut her hair since he last saw her, from the unwieldy mid-back length to a long bob that falls just short of her shoulders. She rakes it back into a small queue as she turns into the hallway.

“Well, I asked Kreacher to clear out the old potions lab by nine, so forgive me if he doesn’t have it ready yet.” Another curious thing: she’s managed to befriend what has to be the most thoroughly unpleasant house elf that Severus has ever had the displeasure of meeting. “Uncle Remus and Hermione also managed two weeks ago to get the first floor wireless to broadcast Muggle channels, and Uncle Sirius has been keeping up with _Breakaway_. That starts at five past, so no promises on if he’ll be out of your way until then.”

“You seem to have considered many logistics.” Severus is almost sorry to have disrupted her plans.

“All except for your propensity to be on time.”

Severus stops on the basement landing.

A few steps later, she looks back, a single eyebrow raised in question.

Did she just… _tease_ him? Severus turns his most severe frown upon her.

She has the audacity to smile at him before continuing down into the cellar level. “There is a type of magic in my world, a way to tether the magical core of two magical beings, such that they may each sense what the other is doing with magic. I asked Hermione about it, and she had no idea what I was talking about. Am I correct to assume that this technique doesn’t exist here?”

Severus considered for a moment. “Tethers from one wizard to another is not undocumented, but… magical cores… I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

Harriet stops in front of two identical workbenches, each set up with a set of brewing supplies. They’re non-standard, same as the set that Harriet had commissioned out of the Diagon Alley silversmiths in preparation for her Polyjuice experiment.

She turns around, biting her lips. “There is a… wellspring of magic in each magical creature. For witches and wizards, this tends to be concentrated into a node-like structure, almost like the circulatory system that carries out blood. The magical core, following such a metaphor, is thus the heart of a magical being’s ability to use magic. It tends to manifest in the form of basic elements.”

Severus blinks. “Are you talking about magics of the soul? Because I must warn you, while I understand that the Dark Lord has been a major political leader of your world for many decades, the necromantic arts are still very much—”

“No! It’s not necromancy. It’s basic magical theory.” Harriet frowns openly. “I thought, when I saw that you didn’t have a general Magical Theory course as an O.W.L.s elective, that people are just more practical here, less concerned with disciplines of magical academia.”

“Miss Potter, are you suggesting that the method with which you control magic is fundamentally different from ours?”

“You should really get used to calling me Miss Black, so you won’t slip up once school starts.”

“Don’t change the subject, Miss Potter. What you’re suggesting, it’s impossible.”

A hint of defiance tilts her chin up. “With all due respect, sir, but how can you be so sure?”

Severus couldn’t very well tell her that her magic feels like a near perfect mix of Lily Evans and the Dark Lord. Then he steels himself. Even if what she’s talking about is necromancy, it wouldn’t be the worst magic Severus has subjected himself to.

He sighs. “Fine. That tether you spoke of. Try doing that with me. Try to find my… magical core.”

Harriet squints just a fraction, then nods.

The last thing Severus feels before blacking out is a bright, searing sensation through his heart, almost like the opposite of a ghost trying to phase through his core.

* * *

_4\. your real friends_

Ginny casts a searching look at the two of them before flipping her hair. “I promised some friends that I’d sit with them,” she says, then turns up the crowded corridor of the train.

Harry exchanges a look with Rigel and is glad to see confusion reflected in her frown.

Rigel shrugs, pale brown hair brushing her shoulders. She’s taller than him now, in her new form. He hadn’t even realised how eerie it was to see a distorted reflection of himself in Rigel until she started going under Polyjuice. In some ways, it’s a bit stranger to see some of his expressions worn on a different face, but Harry will take what he can get.

Harry shrugs back and turns down the corridor, following the thinning crowds to an empty compartment.

Rigel casts several silent spells at the door after she slams it shut. It’s strange; would Harry have been so studious if, in another life, he’d been born a girl? Or is it the influence of growing up with her parents that’s made her like this? She sits down primly in the opposite seat.

Harry feels compelled to remind her, “Don’t make it so that Ron and Hermione can’t find us.”

She leans back. “They’ll still be able to see us if they look in,” she says, jerking her chin towards the window in the door.

Harry smiles, feeling slightly awkward. They’ve come to an understanding between them over the summer; Harriet has relaxed in his presence, just as Harry’s done in hers. With the camaraderie, however, she’s also stopped pretending to be polite. Most of the time, her face was completely blank. Now, as she stares blankly at a spot between the window and the horizon, Harry doesn’t quite know what to say. Conversation never came too easily to him; both Ron and Hermione were better at instigating conversations than he was.

A few moments later, Rigel blinks, then looks at Harry. “It’s strange, you know. Magical Britain is like night and day compared to where I’m from, but King’s Cross? The Muggle world is identical. I even recognise some of the trees.”

“Do you miss it?” _Do you miss them?_

“The trees?” There’s a pause before she breaks out in a rueful grin. “Sorry. I have a bad habit of dodging questions.”

“You don’t need to answer if you don’t want to.” Harry misses the concept of his parents. All he knows of them is the one memory of his mother pleading with Voldemort. Harriet surely knows more. Harriet surely has more to miss.

Rigel frowns and shakes her head. “No, it’s not that. It matters less whether or not I want to answer, and more whether or not you deserve to know.” She pauses, quite carefully. “I miss them. Of course I miss them. But… they haven’t known me —not these past few years, at least. I’ve never had a perfect relationship with them. James— Dad, he never really understood me, I don’t think. He loved— loves me. And so does Lily— Mom. But I… Their love was constricting, and I wanted freedom. I was— I _am_ selfish, and my solution was to distance myself from them, to give them the daughter they deserved while being the person I want to be.”

Harry swallows, then forces himself to nod along.

“I miss them, of course I do. But I never really belonged. I feel more comfortable with you, with Hermione here, than I did even with Archie back home.”

Arcturus Rigel Black, the name that she borrows even now, her cousin, Sirius Black’s son. Harry longs for the friend he never had, that he never would have.

Outside, the landscape rushes by in blurs of green.

“I can’t imagine hiding from everyone like that,” Harry finally says.

Rigel smiles harshly in response. “Can’t you?”

Harry knows the anger that lines her mouth as surely as he feels his own blood boil in sympathy. It’s directed equally at him and at herself, he suspects. “It’s not the same. I have Ron. I have Hermione. Sirius, too.”

“Do they know about Cedric?”

“Yes,” he says immediately, “of course they do.”

Rigel’s smile fades into something more fond. “Liar,” she says without reproach. “Hermione would fret, and Ron wouldn’t understand. And neither you nor I would burden Uncle Sirius with something like that.”

Okay, so maybe Harry hasn’t talked much about the nightmares. Maybe Harry has been trying to ignore the heavy mire of guilt that turns his stomach every time he thinks about how if only he’d taken the goddamn goblet himself, Cedric would be alive. If only he hadn't cared so much having someone else to share the burden of spotlight beside him, Amos Diggory wouldn’t have had to bury his son.

“That’s different,” he protests, but doesn’t elaborate; either way, they both know it’s a lie.

Rigel, because she understands, doesn’t call him out on it. Instead, she changes the subject. “It’s your burden to share. Besides, I won’t have much opportunity for gossip, considering that I won’t be rooming with Hermione.”

“Did they put you in the other dorm?”

Her next smile is one of mischief. “In a sense.”

Harry squints. “They Sorted you already, didn’t they.” It wasn’t a question. “You’re not in Gryffindor.”

Rigel shrugs with innocence that he knows she doesn’t have.

_You could be great, you know…_

“Slytherin?” he asks, knowing he’d be right.

She grins broadly in response. “It’s strange, you know. I never really figured that you’d all be Gryffindor. You and Hermione, at least. Ron was Gryffindor on my end, but I’d have sworn there wasn’t a purer Ravenclaw than Hermione.”

Harry feels some bit of indignation for Hermione. “She’s brave, too.”

Rigel smiles serenely, but her tone is overly bright when she says, “She’s got a rather righteous sense of justice too —hatstall, I’d bet.”

Harry shrugs. She was right. He didn’t need to confirm it.

“Were you, as well? I understand that Slytherin doesn’t have the best reputation here, what with the war and all. It would have been rather conspicuous to end up there.” Her eyes shine as she lays out her analysis, as if she’s somehow clever for it, as if she doesn’t have near-direct access to Harry’s psyche via her own hyperactive imagination.

“Impressive,” Harry drawls, “did you see that in your tea leaves?”

Rigel wrinkles her nose. “Tell me,” she pleads. Her eyes open wide, her lips turn into the slightest pout.

Harry looks out the window. He’s seen that expression used on Sirius often enough. It could get her away with murder, if applied judiciously. It had certainly gotten him off, back when she taught it to him for his trial. It was still early outside, shadows sloping northwest under a watery sun.

He turns back to her once he gives up on suppressing his grin. “You’re right; that damn hat did want me in Slytherin. You know this because I guessed Slytherin for you.”

She grins back, unrepentant.

“It offered me greatness,” he adds. “Except I only ever wanted to belong.”

Rigel lets out a deep breath in a soft, not-quite sigh. “I can’t imagine growing up in the Muggle world. Lily— Mom never liked her sister.”

“Do we have any other relatives?”

Rigel frowns and purses her lips. “If what you said about the headmaster is correct, I don’t think it would matter, even if we did. Few wards are as strong as those tied in blood —this is true in both your world and mine— and, well, Mom was a muggleborn. Petunia already knew about this world. It was best for the Statute.”

“Still, growing up _knowing_ about magic. I’d give anything for that.”

The conversation fades into silence after that. The lunch trolley comes by and Harry buys enough food for two. By the time he returns, Rigel has a book open, lounging, finally like a normal person, across all three seats of her side of the compartment.

Harry throws a pumpkin pasty at her face. She backhands it right back into his without looking up from her book. A few moments pass as Harry opens up a chocolate frog.

Then, Rigel flips the page, stuffs a finger in to mark her place, and holds out her other hand.

“Please,” Harry prompts.

She smiles sweetly. “Thank you,” she says.

It was close enough, so Harry gives her the less battered one.

Half way into her pasty, Rigel folds a napkin around it. “It wouldn’t have changed much, you know.”

Harry tilts his head.

“Growing up with magic. You still wouldn’t have belonged. All the attention that you’re getting now? It would have been worse, growing up with it, everyone treating you differently.”

Harry mechanically finishes chewing his mouthful of pumpkin pasty, then looks at the last bite mournfully, appetite suddenly diminished. After a moment of silence, he looks up

Rigel is lounging blankly in the direction of the window, her gaze familiar in a haunting way that’s unrelated to the fact that most of her expressions seem to have been stolen from Harry’s mirror.

“You never belonged either,” Harry says.

Rigel flinches visibly.

Harry waits.

“My magic. It’s incompatible with this universe. I can slowly feel it wasting away, searching for connections it can’t establish.” She takes a bracing breath. “But I like it here. I’m comfortable. Even though this land has been ravaged with war, even though war is brewing again, I feel at peace. Rigel Black doesn’t _exist_ here, and I never realised how free it would feel, to remake her in my own image.”

Harry draws in a slow breath. He doesn’t want to let her go, this reflection of his. He’s grown some sort of reliance upon her, this last month or so. “You can belong here.”

“No, I really can’t. Even less than I could belong back there.” Rigel stares back with terrible, awful understanding. For a moment, her eyes seem to shift, gaining a tint of unnatural green, gaining a mirage of spectacle frames. “I only wish I could.” _You only wish I could_ , she doesn’t say.

Harry sighs. He’s known, some part of him has ever since the beginning, when he first heard the tale of Harriet Potter. She’s been misplaced, and the only ending her story could have was a return.

Rigel laughs without humour. “Maybe it’s a Potter curse, to be unable to blend in, to always have to pretend.”

“Or maybe we’re just innately dishonest.”

Rigel smiles wryly. “Isn’t that what I said?”

* * *

_5\. a snake of many tails_

The failed attempt at learning to brew in Harriet’s way doesn’t distract Severus for long. Between the Order and the Dark Lord, he simply has too much to do. By the end of August, Severus is nearly looking forward to the start of school, if only because the Dark Lord and Dumbledore alike will lighten up on his duties of espionage.

In an increasingly common turn of events, Severus is wrong. The start of term is a nightmare worse even than war preparations.

Harriet Potter, now known as Rigel Black, granddaughter of Alphard Black, fatherless daughter of the fictionally deceased, France-raised Lyra Black, does not fit in. Severus’s fifth year Slytherins have always been a headache-inducing bunch, not in the least because of the worrisome Malfoy spawn and the flittering mother peahen of Narcissa Malfoy née Black. This year, it’s worse.

The cat fights of teenage girls is not something Severus had realised could be so deadly until a few years into his teaching career, until all the students who had known him as a loner upperclassmen had been cycled out of secondary schooling. He’d had to go to Flitwick for advice then, who told him that the best way to deal with it was to separate the friends into different dorms.

That was easy for Flitwick to say, who got at least a steady half-dozen of Ravenclaw girls every new intake, even eleven years after the scarce war-ridden years that Harriet’s yearmates are from.

Rigel makes for a nice round number of five.

When he was first selecting for prefects, he’d considered Bulstrode as his top candidate. She’s steady enough and smart enough for it, though she’s a bit of a tomboy and a bit of a loner. She has a good number of friends in both Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff, which shows her to be both removed from the petty politicking of Slytherin house and an adept politician. She’s even served the Slytherin Quidditch team as a strategist ever since Flint finally graduated.

She also politely declined by sending her mother to speak to Narcissa at an early July soiree, which then trickled down the grapevine to Severus that Millicent Bulstrode, third in the year in four of the five core subjects, would probably have to lapse in her duties to the Quidditch team if she should have any further responsibilities. She’d framed it in the context of her father suggesting an extracurricular tutor in Duelling, but Severus knew what she meant. It was rather considerate of her, even, to send notice out so early.

Severus went with Parkinson —primarily because he had no other choice, but also because Harriet mentioned having been friends with Parkinson in her world.

That was a mistake.

In his defence, Dumbledore hadn’t yet told him that the Ministry has sponsored a professor of Defence Against the Dark Arts this year. But they did, and there’s an interloper amongst his fifth year Slytherins in the form of an alleged witch of the Black family, returned to haunt the halls of Hogwarts once more. That her lineage is so dubious doesn’t help. That she speaks sometimes like she was born in an era before their parents helps even less. That Parkison, the dramatic chit, has some strange sadistic desire to see the chaos of dissent spread amongst the house’s upperclassmen is… well.

That last part Severus should have seen coming.

The girl in question sits primly in a hard wooden chair in front of Severus’s desk in his personal office. Her hands are folded neatly in her lap, and her face is frozen in a demure pout. Beside her, standing, is Harriet. They wear identical postures of stiff propriety, though Harriet has her wrists crossed at her waist.

“Please explain to me why half of your yearmates are scheduled for detention with Professor Umbridge.”

Parkinson sniffs and tosses her hair back. “Ask her.”

Rigel waits for Severus’s gaze to meet hers before responding evenly. “I figured that if word got out that Bulstrode, Greengrass, Malfoy, and Nott were being forced to write lines with their blood, Umbridge would have her leash tightened.”

Severus looks to Parkinson. “And you didn’t think to stop this?”

Parkinson shrugs with elegance. “The plan is sound.”

“Nott and Greengrass were caught in a compromising position in _broad daylight_. Malfoy and Bulstrode staged a _duelling show_ in the third floor corridor.”

“I’d wager five galleons that the detentions will be retracted by midday tomorrow,” Parkinson drawls.

“Gambling is unbecoming.”

Harriet ignores him. “You’re underestimating Lucius Malfoy. Two to one she’ll be issuing a school wide apology at breakfast.”

Parkinson looks slyly up at Harriet. “Three to one and I’ll take it.”

Severus pinches the bridge of his nose. “ _Miss Black and Miss Parkinson_ , gambling is strictly forbidden amongst students.”

“Then why do you allow it for Quidditch?” Rigel asks. There is a facsimile of genuine confusion in both her voice and her widened eyes.

“Get. Out.”

Next morning, Umbridge doesn’t apologise in as many words, but she does announce that she will be forwarding all future detentions to the respective heads of houses, as she herself will be too busy organising a committee of student-lead initiatives for peace-keeping.

Every single one of his fifth year Slytherins form part of the founding members of the Inquisitorial Squad.

The tenuous peace lasts until Christmas. Severus and Umbridge alike turn a blind eye to the Inquisitorial Squad taking bribes for misdemeanours. Harriet begins disappearing occasionally off to the seventh floor instead of to the Library. A few of his more studious Slytherins end up missing at the exact same times.

Severus minds his own business.

It isn’t until after winter that Harriet appears alongside the Potter boy during the thrice cursed Occlumency lessons that Severus sees her in his office again.

“Why are you here?”

The Potter boy opens his mouth.

“Not you,” Severus snaps. “Miss Black, explain yourself.”

“I think everyone would benefit from my participation. You and Harry can have a sorely needed chaperone—” she widens her eyes in false innocence “—not meaning to imply that Harry would infringe upon your virtue, sir—”

“ _Potter!_ ”

She grins, unrepentant. “I only mean that both you and Harry might benefit from a friendly intermediary.”

“You overstep your bounds, Miss P— Black.”

The Potter boy musters the courage to speak. “With all due respect, _sir_ , I’ve been seeing her dreams.”

Severus blinks. “You did not inform the headmaster of this.”

The Potter boy frowns, huffs in a breath, then is interrupted.

“Respectfully, sir, it only happened after these lessons were already arranged.” She pauses, bites her bottom lip in a show of insecurity. It’s only slightly exaggerated. “I, uh, had a nightmare. I’ve been getting them infrequently ever since the beginning of term. Something about the Hogwarts ambience, I guess, after I had Care of Magical Creatures in the forest…”

The Potter boy takes over. “I’ve also been getting them. Almost every time she did, only I didn’t realise they were hers until the night before we were due to return to Hogwarts. I saw her in the kitchen grabbing water and a snack. We realised then.”

Severus breathes in, then out. “You didn’t realise you were suffering through someone else’s trauma?”

Without mercy, Harriet responds, “The dreams were mostly of starvation, sir. Harry was only confused by the ones where I was being buried alive.”

What was of starvation doing in the Potter boy’s dreams— no, never mind. It’s not his concern.

Severus sighs. “Have you read up on the techniques of Occlumency?”

“Yes, sir,” they say in concert. Their tones harmonise, and their cadences sync. Severus has never heard anything more disconcerting.

“You first, then, Miss Black; prepare yourself. _Legilimens._ ”

A second of blankness passes before—

_—a sunny mountain landscape, indigenous to no discernable biosphere Severus could recognise—_

_—a tingle of magic that feels inexplicably like illusion; an entrance—_

_—a strange, sterile space, a potions lab—_

_—a maze of tunnels—_

_—a room with a brilliantly glowing sphere of… magic?—_

“No,” Harriet cries, “please, get out.”

Severus retreats. He waits a moment, then, as delicately as he knows how to be, he ventures, “You had implied that you already have some practise with arts of the mind.”

She stares blankly at the floor. The Potter boy has his arm around her. She shakes her head. “It’s different. It’s _wrong_. I thought…”

Severus waits, but she doesn’t continue.

The Potter boy breaks the silence. “Should I take her to the hospital wing?”

“No,” Severus says immediately.

Harriet’s identical response echoes a fraction of a second behind his. “Her healing is different too.”

The Potter boy sticks out his chin defiantly. “She can still _help_ you.”

Severus turns on his heels to rifle through his personal potions stores, leaving the Potter boy to fight his losing battle. He returns with a phial and stuffs it into Harriet’s hand. “A Calming Draught, the one you brewed to make sure that your style of brewing wouldn’t cause explosions.”

She stares at it, then closes her fist around it so tightly that her knuckles lighten. She swallows audibly, but doesn’t unstopper the potion. “In a moment,” she says. “Harry, you should be prepared. You’re about to relive your deepest secrets.”

The Potter boy looks to Severus, steely determination and quavering trepidation play out in his frown.

“Clear your mind, Potter. _Legilimens!_ ”

There are five seconds of almost nothing before he breaks through.

_—a red bicycle; the familiar curl of injustice gripping his heart—_

_—the dissonant barking of an ugly dog, harmonising with mocking laughter—_

_—a sinister whisper:_ Slytherin will help you—

And Severus is thrown unceremoniously out. The Potter boy hunches over, hands on his knees and huffing heavily.

Severus takes a moment to absorb his findings. He swallows against the bitter taste at the base of his tongue. “Passable,” he bites out.

Potter seems surprised.

Severus turns away and sits down at his desk. “Out. I’ll expect you two next week at the same hour. Practise clearing your mind.”

They leave without hurry, for all that Potter keeps glancing nervously back at him. Before she closes the door, Harriet flashes a quick smile and an absurd thumbs up gesture at him.

And so the term continues down this endlessly coiling path of tension and controlled chaos.

* * *

_6\. an unveiling of fate_

Harry slowly improves at Occlumency.

The first time Harriet gets a nightmare of suffocating in the earth and he doesn’t, she smuggles in twelve cases of butterbeer for the next DA meeting.

The winding dreams of the dark corridor come less and less often, too. This year, strange as it is, feels more peaceful than any that had come before it.

This all changes after his History of Magic O.W.L.s. The vision that comes is sudden, vivid, of Sirius being put under the Cruciatus Curse. Most professors are occupied with exam supervision. According to ghost intelligence, the heads of house, the headmaster, and Umbridge were all in a staff meeting until late.

Him, Rigel, Hermione, and Ron waste no time breaking into Professor Snape’s office, leaving a brief note on his desk, and diving head first into the ministry.

Rigel casts disillusionment charms on all of them except her and Harry, who huddle under the invisibility cloak. The Atrium is nearly empty, and Hermione Confounds the one unlucky wizard that saw the Floo light up green.

They sneak into the Department of Mysteries in abject silence, they break into strange rooms with arcane artifacts: vats of pale, glowing brains, a single staff of gnarled wood, an enticing veil behind which a familiar voice whispers, a gem of deepest blue, lit from within by a winking eye.

Rigel sneaks a small hourglass off the wall of the room of clocks. Harry pretends to ignore it.

Finally, they come to the hall of glass orbs.

They’re still under the invisibility cloak when they stumble upon the strange orb marked with Harry’s name, but as soon as Harry covers the plaque with his cloak, there’s a rush of air as—

“ _Accio!_ ”

The cloak wrenches itself off of them.

Rigel reaches out a hand and snatches it back, but it’s too late, Harry and Rigel stand in plain sight in front of a small army of hooded figures. Harry clutches the glass orb in a clammy palm.

“Careful, now, Potter. Hand it over,” says Lucius Malfoy’s voice.

Chaos ensues. Harry and Rigel lose Ron and Hermione as they run through the rows and rows of prophecies. They end up cornered in the big circular room that spun, but Rigel slams a few doors open and closed at random, and she and Harry duck into the big empty auditorium with the whispering veil.

Rigel bombards the door with spells once they’re inside, enough that it almost disappears from Harry’s vision.

“Quick, Harry, now’s your chance. Listen to it.”

Harry looks at her, fiddling with that strange hourglass—

Wait, that’s a Time-Turner.

“What are you—”

“The prophecy, Harry. Listen to it. I’ll need to go soon, and I don’t know if my spells will last once I’m back.”

Harry looks back at the innocuous glass sphere.

He smashes it.

A ghostly, misty figure rises, forming the unmistakable form of Trelawny. She speaks in a harsh voice Harry has heard once before:

“ _The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches … born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies …_ ”

Nothing interrupts them as the prophecy draws to a close, and Harry has the chance to exchange one grim look over the fading ghost of a memory before—

_BOOM!_

The wall around the door crumples, and light leaks in around the silhouette of Bellatrix Lestrange in all her insane glory. She shrieks with rage at the pile of glass shards dusting the floor between Harry and Rigel, and she fires blast after blast of _Crucio! Crucio! Crucio!_

Each time, however, Rigel conjures a temporary chunk of stone to block it, but Harry can see that she also tires with every spell.

Finally, frustrated by the evasion, Bellatrix shouts, “ _Expelliarmus!_ ”

“ _Accio wand!_ ” Rigel shouts immediately, reaching her hand desperately for the wand that was identical to Harry’s but also _not_ Harry’s.

From her left hand, a glimmering golden chain escapes, tumbling pendant over clasp towards the fluttering black veil behind.

“ _Avada Kedavra!_ ” Bellatrix cackles as green light flashes through the room.

A flutter of translucent silver lands in front of the veil, but Harriet topples backwards, hand still clutching desperately at her wand.

* * *

_0\. resonance_

She hurts. She hurts so _much_.

_Let me help._

No.

_Please, I know how to save you._

How could she trust a _sentient rock_?

_At least help yourself, then. Use the Time-Turner!_

What?

_The mokeskin pouch! The Time-Turner!_

Hands trembling, she reaches for the thing. Her magic rages around her, and it hurts. Something flares. Something else shatters.

Then, suddenly, the earth presses against her, and she can’t breathe.

She can’t breathe _she can’t breathe shecan’tbreathe—_


End file.
